Savage said Palisades, like the Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman, was built to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes and airplane crashes. That applies also to the plants now in crisis mode in Japan where the problem, according to Bill Schalk, the spokesman at Cook, was the quake's "one-two punch."

"In the case of Japan, it was both the seismic event, which the plants withstood as they were designed to do, actually, and the tsunami," he said. "The tsunami took out the generators and electricity they needed to flood the reactors. That's what took them down."

Like Savage, Schalk said a quake like the one that struck Japan would be an extraordinary event should it strike here.

"Michigan has never had a quake that size," he said.

Although tsunamis aren't possible locally, Savage and Schalk said Lake Michigan is sometimes subject to a seiche, or a primarily freshwater phenomenon stemming from air pressure changes or strong squall lines. The largest such seiche (pronounced saysh) in the last century took place in June 1954 and produced a large wave that swept 100 people off a pier in Michigan City and continued on to Chicago where it killed eight fishermen.

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Such events are rare but, should they occur, nuclear power facilities in Bridgman and Covert are equipped to handle them, Schalk said.

"We have a seiche procedure. ... It raises the level of awareness," Schalk said.

Although neither Schalk nor Savage could predict how Japan's nuclear crisis might be resolved, both said officials in the U.S. are watching the situation closely in hopes of learning from it. The lessons there could be as valuable if not more so than those learned at Three Mile Island in 1979, Schalk said.